The House Of Tudor

Henry VII

1485-1509

Arthur, Prince of Wales

Henry had been haggling with Ferdinand and Isabella for some time regarding
the terms of the arranged marriage between his son Arthur and their daughter
Katherine of Aragon. The main bones of contention being the dowry she would
receive and the two fathers deep distrust of each other, based on past experience.
A final marriage treaty was arrived at in October, 1496, after which a proxy
marriage took place.

Ferdinand and Isabella raised their fears about sending their daughter
to England before the Tudor dynasty was secured by the removal of rival
claimants to the throne. Due to his Yorkist descent, Edward, Earl of Warwick, the son of George Duke of Clarence, posed
the largest threat to the Tudor claim to the throne.

A plot was hatched whereby an escape attempt would be
engineered involving Warwick and Warbeck, who would then be hastily recaptured.
This resulted in Warbeck being hanged at Tyburn and Warwick beheaded. Warwick,
believed to have been mentally retarded, (his sister later said 'he did not
know a goose from a capon'), was held prisoner all his short life for being
who he was and died because he tried to escape.

Catherine of Aragon was sent to England in 1501 and received in her new country with much rejoicing. The royal family waited
to receive her in London, Henry, still fearing he had been deceived in some
way by the cunning Ferdinand and suspecting that Arthur's bride could be
ugly or even worse, deformed, could contain his anxiety no longer and rode
with Arthur to see her at Basingstoke. Catherine
was a sweet faced, pretty girl with attractive red-gold hair.
A pleasant interlude took place, where Catherine danced some of her native
Spanish dances for the King and her future husband, who then departed well
satisfied. Henry wrote to her parents that he 'much admired her beauty as
well as her agreeable and dignified manner.'

Arthur and Catherine were married at St. Paul's Cathedral, the bride was given away by Arthur's ebullient ten year old brother,
Henry, Duke of York. There were feasts, jousts and disguisings to celebrate
the event. Even the parsimonious Henry, always inclined to be very frugal with money,
spent lavishly on the celebrations. The 'upstart' Tudor dynasty gained much
in prestige from its new-forged links with the powerful House of Trastamara.

Arthur and Catherine where sent to Ludlow, on the Welsh Marches, traditionally the seat of the Prince of Wales. During the spring, an epidemic of sweating sickness was rife in the area and
both Arthur and Catherine contracted it. Catherine recovered, but Arthur,
a pale thin youth who had never enjoyed robust health, did not and died
at Ludlow Castle.

The Death of Elizabeth of York

Henry and Elizabeth were prostrate with grief at the loss of their eldest son and heir and attempted to comfort
each other. The survival of the dynasty they had founded now rested on their one surviving son, Prince Henry.

The grieving parents decided to try for another
son to secure the succession in the Tudor line. Elizabeth quickly became
pregnant. The pregnancy affected her health and she was unwell throughout
it. Nine days after giving birth to a daughter,
Catherine, she died in the Tower of London, on 11th February, 1503, dying of a post-pregnancy infection on her 37th birthday. The child lived only a day. Henry VII gave his wife a magnificent funeral, Elizabeth was buried at Westminster Abbey in the ornate Henry VII
chapel which her husband was building. The young Sir Thomas More wrote an
elegiac poem in her memory.

Margaret Tudor

The King's elder daughter Margaret Tudor was married to James IV, King of Scots, to seal an alliance with Scotland. Scotland and England concluded the Treaty of Perpetual Peace, the first peace agreement between the two realms in over 170 years.
Even before Margaret's sixth birthday, Henry had considered a marriage between Margaret and James IV as a means of ending James' support for the Yorkist pretender Perkin Warbeck, Henry escorted his daughter part of the way north, calling en-route to see his aged mother, Margaret Beaufort, at her home in Collyweston, Northamptonshire. It was through this marriage that the Scottish Stuart dynasty were eventually to inherit England's throne.

The later years

New disputes arose between Henry VII and Ferdinand of Aragon, who still could not bring
themselves to trust each other. Since his daughter was now widowed, Ferdinand
wished to be reimbursed of the first installment of her dowry. Henry,
on the other hand, having got the money, was singularly inclined not to part with it and
inflamed the situation further by promptly demanding the rest of it.

Henry suggested that he should marry Catherine himself. This proposal met with an icy response from Isabella,
'It would be an evil thing,' she wrote 'the mere mention of which offends
the ears'. Agreement was finally reached that Catherine should marry the young Henry,
the new heir to the throne. Even this arrangement did not run smoothly,
Henry and Ferdinand continued to haggle endlessly about money.

Catherine was forced to live in near penury with a frugal allowance from
her father-in-law. Henry at one point instructed his son to repudiate his
betrothed and embarked on a series of alternative negotiations with the Habsburgs. This resulted in
his younger daughter Mary being betrothed to the Habsburg heir, the ugly and highly inbred,
Charles V.

After the death of Elizabeth of York, Henry became somewhat reclusive and
even more avaricious. He entertained
the idea of marrying Catherine's mentally deranged sister, Joanna, who since the death of their elder sister, was
heiress to her mother's kingdom of Castille.

Henry VII died on 21st April, 1509 of tuberculosis at the age of 52 and was buried at Westminster beside
Elizabeth of York. Their magnificent effigies, provided by his son, Henry VIII and that of Henry's mother,
Margaret Beaufort, (who followed him to the grave but a few months later) by the Renaissance sculptor Pietro Torrigiano can still
be seen in the Henry VII chapel at Westminster Abbey.

The family of Elizabeth of York and Henry VII

The marriage of Elizabeth of York and Henry Tudor was to produce 7 children, of which only 4 survived the perils of infancy in Tudor times:-

Arthur predeceased his father, Henry VII, he died suddenly at the early age of 15, of the sweating sickness, at Ludlow Castle in the Welsh Marches soon after his marriage to Katherine of Aragon, and is buried at Worcester Cathedral.